Top billing? Peter O'Toole, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Shirley Temple are all likely candidates, in what promises to be the most star-studded – if saddest — "In Memoriam" segment in years.

Credits, even in death, are always a dicey issue in Hollywood.

As the Academy Awards prepare once again to salute their dear departed tonight, you can bet that there has been a lot of behind-the-scenes jockeying for position among the next of kin. Whose face will be first in the procession of the fallen? Whose image will be the all-important last – the one most likely to linger in the memory? And who will have to be cut out entirely?

"It's tough for the Academy [of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences], because there are so many phone calls asking them to include people," says Dennis Doros, co-founder of Milestone Films, the Harrington Park company that distributes classic and independent films on DVD. "There is a lot of pressure on the academy. Why this person, why not that person?"

For Sunday, alas, the competition is liable to have been especially keen. The period of 2013-14 has been a grim year for the Reaper.

Then there are the not-so-big names, the adjunct names, the behind-the-scenes names who helped make the big stars shine.

Alicia Rhett, one of the last remaining cast members of "Gone With the Wind." Margaret Pellegrini and Ruth Duccini, two of the last surviving "Wizard of Oz" Munchkins. Elmore Leonard and Tom Clancy, whose books put the twists and turns into some of Hollywood's great action thrillers. Ray Dolby, who created the stereo process that Jeanine (June Chadwick), the flaky girlfriend of "This Is Spinal Tap's" David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean), refers to as "Doubly." Asian action impresario Sir Run Run Shaw. Bollywood star Suchitra Sen. Critic Roger Ebert.

"I think this is the most emotional part of the Academy Awards, because everybody grows up identifying with someone there," Doros says.

What's sadly notable about 2013-14 is not merely how fatal those 12 months were, but how they cut across generational lines.

"I think death was kind of non-discriminatory, in terms of age," says Hackensack film scholar and author Caseen Gaines ("A Christmas Story: Behind the Scenes of a Holiday Classic").

"One thing that's very interesting is that, in social media and among my friends, all of these people have resonated across the generations," Gaines says. "I know older people who love Philip Seymour Hoffman, and lots of younger people who are upset with Shirley Temple's passing."

Moreover, this year's tolling of the bell encompasses not just different generations of actor, but different generations of Hollywood.

O'Toole, Funicello, Schell and Caesar all represent Hollywood's silver age – the 1960s and 1970s, those transitional years when L.A. was evolving from the mogul empire of its classic period to the less centralized showbiz hub of today.

Hoffman, Gandolfini and Walker represent the new guard – the young Turks (relatively speaking) who emerged in the 1990s and 2000s, and whose deaths have a special poignancy, because they came too soon.

As for Durbin and Temple, two of the biggest child stars of the 1930s — they were among the last survivors of Hollywood's golden age, when the Goldwyns talked to the Warners and the Warners talked only to God.

Temple's fame, in particular, was a class apart from the ordinary Hollywood icon. From 1935 to 1938 she was the single most popular box office attraction in the U.S. Her brand extended to dolls, dresses, buttons, storybooks, dishes, mugs, playing cards and even the famous (non-alcoholic) drink named after her by a Chasen's bartender.

"Deanna Durbin and Shirley Temple were part of this fount of great child stars in the 1930s," says film historian Richard Koszarski of Teaneck ("Fort Lee: The Film Town"). "The film industry was suffering, there was the implementation of the production code, so the studios have to move away from Mae West and gangsters and Betty Boop cartoons, and find something else. And they stumble on these two. And they hit the jackpot."

Temple and Durbin, at least, could be said to have fulfilled their career destinies. They lived a full span; their stardom was cut short, not by death, but by aging out of the child-actor (or in Durbin's case, teen-actor) niche.

Who knows what Gandolfini, 52, Hoffman, 46, or Walker, 40, would have done in the years they should have had left?